The Daily Lard 11-2-11

Douglas LeeNov 2, 2011 7:08 AM

Good Morning, Broncos fans! Greg Gabriel believes it's pretty much time to move Tim Tebow to another position, if not now than sooner than later. Gabriel says that Tebow was blessed in his Florida career to have arguably the best players in the country surrounding him, and that with the offensive scheme, line and skill players at his disposal, Tim was bound to be successful there. A quick glance at Tebow's 2008 BCS Title team shows NFL starters Cam Newton, the Pouncey twins, Aaron Hernandez, David Nelson, Percy Harvin, Carlos Dunlap, Joe Haden, Brandon Spikes, and Major Wright, plus lesser NFL lights (but still in the league) Louis Murphy, Riley Cooper and Ahmad Black, among others. Gabriel states that this vast talent supply helped Tebow get away with his poor mechanics, and he writes:

He does not read defenses well, he lacks accuracy and he is too impatient to let plays develop. All things that are needed to be a good NFL quarterback. Denver has adjusted its offense to try and call plays to Tebow’s strengths, using the shotgun more and having some run/pass options.

Broncos

Notes from Mike Klis: the concussion suffered by S Quinton Carter may open the door for Rahim Moore to start this Sunday.

MJD says the Broncos should go back to the D logo and orange jerseys of 1996 and earlier. I co-sign this, emphatically.

Mark Kiszla points out that potentially losing out in the Andrew Luck sweeps won't be so bad for Denver, as long as they can end up with Matt Barkley.

Von Miller and Willis McGahee visited an elementary school in Aurora to support the NFL's Play 60 program.

Tebow

Jeff Legwold considers the cases for and against ending Tebow from the starting QB spot, and he says Tim's poor footwork limits what the team can do in its game plans for him.

Peter King says he thinks Tebow won't be starting for Denver come Week 11, but it appears to be pure speculation - this isn't him reporting that he's hearing such chatter from Dove Valley.

Albert Breer spoke with an NFL personnel exec who doesn't think even an offense tailored to fit Tebow would be successful.

Greg Gabriel takes on the regurgitative bloviator known as Skip Bayless, who was busy telling everyone that Denver was making Tebow take snaps from under center too much. But Gabriel hit up the tape and found that Tim threw out of the shotgun 28 times as opposed to just 12 from under center, and Gabriel thinks that Denver has in fact been molding the offense to fit Tebow's strengths.

Raiders

Trimmings

San Diego has signed former Carolina first-round pick Everette Brown and will release fellow DE Ogemdi Nwagbuo to make room for him.

The Browns signed RB Thomas Clayton with Montario Hardesty and Peyton Hillis banged up; to make room for Clayton, the Browns waived their 2009 second-rounder, WR Brian Robiskie. Meanwhile, Hillis is making more friends in Cleveland by the day - this time by not showing up to a Halloween event at a local Boys & Girls Club. Still miss Hillis?

Pats WR Julian Edelman was arrested for allegedly groping a woman at a Halloween party.

The September drowning death of a man at the home of Texans DE Antonio Smith has been ruled an accident.

Matt Birk won his appeal of the $5K fine for removing his microphone by saying it made him uncomfortable.

Andy Benoit reviews in detail the film from Giants/Dolphins, Rams/Saints and Ravens/Cards.

Mike Tanier thinks the growing schedule of NFL analysis by ex-players on TV is giving them all these opportunities to controversially criticize current players.

Don Banks sees plenty of coincidence in the race for Luck, while Ross Tucker considers the impracticality of blatantly Sucking for Luck. Plus, Jason Cole is hearing that scouts see Barkley and Landry Jones as good enough to keep teams from feeling they have to pay a king's ransom to move up for Luck.

Chase Stuart will now be writing for Smart Football as the PFR blog sadly goes silent, and his first post is on SRS (Simple Rating System) for college football.

Doug is IAOFM’s resident newsman and spelling czar. Follow him on Twitter @IAOFM

Tim Tebow played linebacker and tight end at the Trinity Christian Academy in Jacksonville, FL, for one season, before moving to Nease High School to play quarterback. Maybe he should switch back and play tight end for the Broncos.

Posted by CompUser on 2011-11-02 21:43:30

@broncosmontana

TT has a body weight of 236 lb and a timed 40 of 4.71 - neither is optimum for playing safety or TE in the NFL. Much too slow for safety, but not big enough for TE unless he can demonstrate the ability to block and/or receive at the NFL level. Shannon Sharpe did make the HoF as a TE of about that size, but he also had a background in receiving. He&#8217s going to have to make it as a QB.

Posted by Doc Bear on 2011-11-02 20:40:04

John Clayton has a bit out today about a quarterback who went through a string of 5 starts completing less than 50% of his passes overall. A quarterback who he says is often criticized for holding onto the ball too long - a problem he says comes from receivers who struggle to get separation, forcing him to wait and wait and wait. A quarterback who recently rallied his team back from a huge halftime deficit to win after the team moved him back into the shotgun late. A quarterback whose team has serious offense line protection issues, so maybe the shotgun is a better idea full time.

Sound familiar?

This quarterback, he says, is elite - because of what he showed in the huge comeback.

This quarterback is none other than Joe Flacco.

If Flacco can get a pass after a few years of experience on a sequence of games very similar to what our own Tim Tebow has put up recently, can&#8217t we all just be a little bit more patient while we watch Tim develop?

Posted by penguinman831 on 2011-11-02 19:30:12

The line between a competitive team (not a contender) and a terrible team is minute. Confidence and coaching/scheme (extremely related to each other) are the backbone for this team to elevate its current game.

Someone needs to step up (coach or player) and instill the confidence ingredient - QB is the easy one, but maybe there is someone else that can mix it up. The scheme part is obvioulsy a work in progress thanks to being the 3rd month of this staff with these players (new DC and new O-staff except McCoy).

I wonder if McCoy&#8217s tenure here is tied to Tebow&#8217s success?

Posted by Orange and Blue on 2011-11-02 18:48:47

My team, with a wet-behind-the-ears young QB, is 1-1 so far, and getting all the media attention in the sports world.

The team as a whole is not very good, but they can occasionally be fun to watch. They were beaten badly by a very good team last week, and the young QB struggled against a great pass rush.

There&#8217s a game sunday that I look forward to watching. He&#8217ll probably have a bit easier time of it, and our best HB might be back too!

It will be fun to watch the game, and to watch the new QB grow & learn some more.

Who knows, maybe we&#8217ll even be 2-1 in his 3 starts after Sunday - then he&#8217d be 3-3 for his career! That would be neat-o for a rookie.

Enjoy the game, -J

Posted by Johnny Denver on 2011-11-02 18:47:17

Elway seemed to be seizing on a benchmark of 6-10 from what I remember.

At the beginning of the season, I was also thinking 6-10, but that was before Detroit and Buffalo also improved so much.

As for me, I&#8217m a purist. I want every team&#8217s record to reflect how good they are, and I want the worse teams to have a worse record than teams that are better than them. I don&#8217t want to be 0-16 if we&#8217re a 3-13 team, because if someone else is legitimately 2-14, they should have a higher pick than us.

Man, what if we had had the #1 pick last season?

Posted by tunesmith on 2011-11-02 18:06:38

G-man, we had one of those; his name was Cutler or something like that. But I&#8217m not sure that angle has or is working out either.

Posted by SteveS on 2011-11-02 18:03:26

I admire and respect Tebow&#8217s desire to be an NFL QB, and I hope that it happens. But, if he ever agrees to move to anything, I&#8217ve felt from day one it should be safety.

Seriously, can you imagine the hits he would dish out? Kind of like Lynch, after Bill Walsh converted him from QB to safety.

Does he have the right tools for it, though? What do you guys think?

Posted by broncosmontana on 2011-11-02 18:01:51

Don&#8217t worry everyone - I had a dream last night that Tim threw for 350 yards and 3 first half touchdowns on Sunday. It&#8217s obviously a psychic vision that is sure to come true.

This has been the most depressing week of the year for this team. Here&#8217s the thing though - Tim was (somewhat) improved this past week. His main issue right now is knowing where to go with the ball quickly. When he makes a quick decision, the ball comes out with confidence, accuracy, and velocity. When he doesn&#8217t see it quickly, he hurries, is unsettled, and takes a sack or throws inaccurately. He&#8217s made ONE terrible, terrible decision - the pick 6 - but most of his decisions are good, they&#8217re just not all confident. Cam Newton makes a ton of bad decisions and throws a lot of INTs, but he makes EVERY throw with confidence. That makes a huge difference.

Let&#8217s shelve the Tim-is-terrible talk, please - for all the talk about &#8220defenses will adjust to Tim&#8221, let&#8217s instead think about how the coaching staff (after seeing two weeks of stacked boxes and hard pass rush) can adjust the game plan to it better than they did this week, and let&#8217s see the receivers adjust to that and make reads of their own and find ways to create a quick early separation and catch every pass that hits their hands, let&#8217s talk about how the defense needs to be aggressive at actively forcing turnovers and create a short field early on against a qb who is still learning the offense and his receivers and hasn&#8217t played in a year, let&#8217s talk about how McGahee will hopefully be back and can pick up some good rushing yardage to keep us out of 3rd and long.

Once the timing and vision click for Tim (and it probably will be like that - one game it all just clicks), he will show more accuracy and confidence - and production! Right now, the clock in his head on sacks and bad throws is &#82201-2-3-oh no, no one&#8217s clearly open I don&#8217t want to throw a pick and there&#8217s the rush and&#8230.&#8221; on his strong throws, it&#8217s &#82201-2-gone, boom! completion&#8221. The more he plays, the more of the second type of clock is present - it will only get better. He has ability - and has absolutely shown it on some fantastic (and difficult!) throws - but hasn&#8217t found consistency and rhythm yet. Let&#8217s all be a little more patient - he should be given the rest of the year, but absolutely at least through the Jets game.

One way or another, there will be a new quarterback leading this team next year. The question is, will it be Tim (emerging from the next few weeks with a newfound quickness and confidence), or will it be New Rookie Quarterback from the draft. That question is still to be resolved, and there&#8217s no use to debate it now. For now, the best thing to do is to support the team, support Tim, look for signs of week-to-week improvement from EVERYONE, and talk about we can do to fix things for each subsequent week.

Wetzel&#8217s right that the most fervent Tebowmaniacs (as opposed to most of us, who are simply rooting and hoping), need to lighten up a bit, but so too do the &#8220Tebow haters,&#8221 (again, not those here who criticize or worry), but the people who really just hope he fails miserable, eats turf, etc. So much extremes with this guy it&#8217s hard to get a handle on anything rational. All I know is that I do feel for Tim himself a bit and hope he gets his act together soon. But either way, this is starting to feel like Josh McDaniels all over again (yes, a ton of differences, but&#8230) - people irrational on either side of the equation, a fanbase gets divided, the team gets distracted, the future gets muddled and I start to want that bandaid ripped off soon so we can just move on.

Simplest solution would be for Tebow to start to &#8220get it&#8221 and silence the naysayers, but with all the hype comes the hate and it&#8217s gonna be noisy regardless, alas.

Posted by underdog on 2011-11-02 17:39:32

I think Greg Gabriel&#8217s comments apply to many highly valued college QBs, not just Tebow.

There are several college teams who would have a decent chance to beat the suck for Luck crowd, if college vs NFL games happened. Of course, it&#8217s the terrible teams who get the top QBs. So the QB suddenly finds himself on a worse team than he&#8217s used to being on while playing against better defenses then he&#8217s used to facing. That&#8217s as much a factor in QB busts as anything else.

It is enough for me to wonder about finding a QB who produced for a bad team; One who is used to putting his team on his shoulders; One you can find in the 3rd round. Use the first two picks (more if you trade away rights to the top QBs) to protect the QB and give him a weapon on offense. Maybe giving a rookie QB a better team than he&#8217s used to will work out.

But, smarter football minds than me seem to like doing it the normal way, so what do I know.

Posted by Gman on 2011-11-02 16:16:42

If we give Tebow the rest of the season, I think we can go 2-14.

Posted by NDbronco on 2011-11-02 16:08:21

overgard, agreed.

People seem to think that if he doesn&#8217t look good now he&#8217ll never be good. It&#8217s a bit more pronounced with Tebow because he did start out more raw. On top of it, he looks different than what a prototypical successful QB should look like.

I think he needs a full year, deliberate practice, and a coaching staff that doesn&#8217t necessarily mold the offense to his strengths but allows him to work on his weaknesses. Someone mentioned that 6 of 9 plays were runs on first down. You know what the other 3 were? Play action shots deep to a covered receiver. Is it too much to ask to just drop back or pass out of the shotgun on first down some of the time to stay on schedule? Why not give the option to pass against 8 in the box?

Posted by chantech on 2011-11-02 16:05:25

We are still in the very early stages of Tebow as a starting QB in the NFL. In my opinion, he looked lost and confused on a lot of plays. That lead to poor decision making and holding onto the ball too long. ALL young QBs have this problem at some point&#8230some much worse than others.

When Tebow knows where to throw the ball and is confident in the play, his footwork isn&#8217t too bad and he makes some good throws. It&#8217s when he is unsure of what to do that he gets happy feet and makes poor throws.

Anyone who has played any sort of sport knows how much your confidence can effect your play. You can see that when Tebow gets in a funk, he stays there for a while. But also, when he makes a couple plays, things start to pick up. That is why I want to see more short quick passes. Get him some confidence by making an easy throw, that requires almost no read. Wait until he has built up a little momentum to do 5 step drops with no rollouts.

From a mental perspective, counting the number of reps a starting QB should get, Tebow is still in preseason (in a normal year with an offseason). QBs often look bad in the preseason because they don&#8217t have the chemistry with the rest of the offense. Give him a chance to get some of the mental kinks out.

Posted by dieseldan on 2011-11-02 15:17:49

I am on the thought process that we should give tebow the rest of the season regardless, it&#8217s valuable experience and of we tank we draft a QB, if we tank bad we get a better QB&#8230.win win

Posted by Eric Hyatt on 2011-11-02 15:17:20

I think if people are honest with themselves, the worst thing that could have happened to Tebow was the firing of Josh McDaniels. With his departure, that meant the Broncos were highly unlikely to run the type of offense McDaniels wanted to run.

Consequently, Tebow was most likely going to have to learn, at the very least, an offense that had many tweaks from what McD had run.

While I don&#8217t want to speculate on what might have been too much, I do believe that, if McD hadn&#8217t been fired, he would have kept Orton as the starter for all of 2010 and then 2011, then allow Orton to leave and name Tebow his starter in 2012. Assuming that was McD&#8217s plan, his firing meant the plan went up in smoke and Tebow was now at the mercy of the new regime and what they wanted to do.

As far as the fans go, if those who have been so vocal about how the Broncos need to do this or do that (and I&#8217m not referring to anyone here, but definitely referring to those who post one-liners at the DP website) were honest with themselves, they&#8217d admit that maybe they don&#8217t know what they are talking about some of the time, if not most of the time. But I think we know those types of fans will never admit that&#8230 and it&#8217s those types of fans that are causing a problems with the Broncos attempts to build a team as the current regime sees fit.

Posted by Bob Morris on 2011-11-02 15:14:05

What I want to see from Tebow this week is a 3rd down percentage of 33% or better and a completion % of at least 50%. I know those are low but it is progress. If Tebow converts 40% of 3rd downs and completes 60% of his passes then Denver wins against most teams and is competitive against elite teams.

Posted by sleepyteak on 2011-11-02 15:11:37

I&#8217m not trying to find comfort or scapegoat anyone. I&#8217m just saying he can&#8217t be treated like a normal developmental prospect because there&#8217s too much attention and pressure on him.

Posted by ohiobronco on 2011-11-02 14:47:03

Seriously, Piper, ohiobronco, etal? You find comfort, blame or a scapegoat in the idea that the fan base forced EFXs&#8217 hand?

To me that&#8217s even worse. That&#8217s venturing into hopeless territory. That tells me that the state of the on-field product should be the least of our concerns.

Unfortunately, Bowlen green-lighting a comprehensive renovation by McD, and then tossing him under the bus when things got a little hot provides ample evidence that you guys are exactly right. This is a mob rules organization at its core, and I don&#8217t see much good arising out of that mentality.

Posted by Drewthorn on 2011-11-02 14:39:50

Some compair St Tim to Elway. Or Plummer. Or Steve Young. I see Eric Crouch. No one outside of Nebraska probably knows or cares, but in Husker Nation it was considered a tragety that no one gave Crouch a chance to play QB. With proper coaching, and an offense built around his strenghts (like running the option) Eric Crouch could be a very good NFL quarterback.

At least, that&#8217s what half a million Husker fans thought. But not one NFL team did.

Posted by Piper A R on 2011-11-02 14:25:51

Rec post #6.

Maybe EFX would be more inclined to &#8216properly&#8217 develop Tebow were it not for the sideshow that follows St. Tim like the dirt cloud follows Pig-Pen. Maybe the best thing for Tebow would be to Steve Young off to another team where he can hide in the shadow of an established quarterback for five years or so.

To quote post 5, no one expects a 6 month old baby to walk or talk at all and no good parent would rush it. But the &#8216lets see what we got in Tebow&#8217 crowd (we always knew we had a project) just had to get him on the field. I was fine with Tebow holding a clipboard and wearing a cap for 2011, even if it meant tolerating another season of Orton. I seem to have been wrong that playing too soon would harm his play. But I was right about the potential for backlash should he play poorly, and it&#8217s much worse than I had expected.

Posted by Piper A R on 2011-11-02 14:21:54

overgard, I like it. I truly don&#8217t get the rush to judgement on the guy. A little patience would be nice to see.

As far as Barnwell goes, I can only assume he brainfarted and forgot about Von Miller.

+1 for the Stripes nod, Doug.

Posted by AllBroncsAllDay on 2011-11-02 13:42:08

I must not understand the finer points of safety play, because after watching Quinton Carter repeatedly try to paralyze himself with his patented head-down launch whiffs against San Diego, a line like &#8220...the concussion suffered by S Quinton Carter may open the door for Rahim Moore to start this Sunday.&#8221 seems more fitting for some tongue and cheek KSK piece. I mean, how badly was Moore playing to need a Carter injury to get back on the field?

In fact, lost in the warranted excitement about Von Miller is the fact that EFXs&#8217 first draft effort might maybe has not been so good. Franklin might not be a tackle, Irving looks too ponderous to play anything but old school SAM (except he doesn&#8217t deal well with that pesky blocker thing), and the duel safeties are fighting it out in the lesser of two evils arena. Chris Harris is probably the second best&#8212or at least second most ready&#8212rookie of the bunch.

So here&#8217s hoping that Matt Barkley or Landry Jones can both overcome a little history and justify an extra rebuild year. I thought Barkley looked pretty good against Stanford, but I hate reading things like Rang and Bunting had to say yesterday. You know, the part where there is nothing about his physical ability that sticks out, but&#8230 And, of course, with Landry Jones, I live in an area where most think both Jason White and Josh Huepel were better. Neither of the latter had meaningful NFL careers. In fact, White wasn&#8217t even invited to a training camp.

Oh well, I guess. We Broncos fans are getting good at feeling hopeless. It is our lot, I suppose.

Posted by Drewthorn on 2011-11-02 13:40:19

8 games left. That&#8217s a lot of the season.

This one already feels like a long season.

The QB thing has made this season brutal. Hindsight&#8217s 20/20, but I wish that Fox would have tapped Tebow to be the starter in week 1. It would have made the season so much more cohesive. Right now, it feels like Denver&#8217s in their second season and if they make another QB switch, it&#8217ll be another season.

At this point, I am hoping that Tebow can improve enough in the short term to at least stay on the field because the thought of watching Orton or Quinn start when they won&#8217t be here next year is heartbreaking. I&#8217m pretty sure (around 90% sure) that Elway wants a 1st round QB for this team, but there&#8217s no guarantee he&#8217ll get to pick Barkley and no chance that Luck will be available unless an otherworldly combination of events takes place (Rams or Colts or AZ or Carolina finish with the worst record and on top of that get an offer from Denver -more than any other team - that they deem as valuable).

Fans need to realize that there&#8217s no silver bullet, especailly at QB for this team. You can&#8217t just switch QBs willy-nilly. The calls for Adam Weber are hilarious.

Denver is bottoming out. You had to know that Denver was going to get worse before they got better once the new regime came in. This season is a wash already, but Elway & Fox knew it would be. They expected, I think, to be around the 4 or so wins mark. It looks like they&#8217ll come in under that mark, which is good for talent reasons. IMO if you&#8217re not in the playoff hunt, you might as well be 0-16. I&#8217d rather be 0-16 than 6-10 any season.

If the goal is to get better, the best thing that can happen is for Denver to lose a lot in the next 8 weeks. And if the way to get better is to add blue-chip talent, which Denver sorely needs, then losing a lot in the next 8 games is just what the doctor ordered. Fans must understand that the coaches want to win just as bad as the fans do, however the coaches can only coach the talent that&#8217s already on the team. And Denver&#8217s talent level is well below league average.

Nobody (NOBODY) knows how to draft. It&#8217s a full-on crapshoot. In NE they are KILLING Belichick (the GM) just like they used to kill Shanny in Denver in the 2000&#8217s. Eventually Belichick will put together a decent defense or the other shoe will drop in 2 or 3 more years and he&#8217ll get canned. You don&#8217t think the Bills want to get better? They draft 6 or 7 guys every year too. They miss on most picks and hit on a few, just like everybody else. If anybody really knew what they were doing, theat team would win the SB most years, but nobody does. It&#8217s a game of strategy, luck, and probability. Denver&#8217s just been unlucky and had poor strategy. Last year, I thought Denver had a better strategy. But for now, Broncos &#8220season&#8221 from me is draft weekend through free agency. I&#8217m excited for that to change, but until then I can&#8217t wate my time gnashing my teeth over in-season personnel dramas concerning veterans or guys that this staff didn&#8217t draft.

Right now, the thing that I&#8217m most worried about is the thought that Denver may have whiffed on their entire draft sans Miller & Julius Thomas. Gawd I howe Moore or Carter can be a + starter in this league. Hopefully Franklin will either improve or the coaches move him to LG, but he has not looked good of late in the passing game.

In the meantime, I want to see some guys step up and mitigate future needs like Decker, Woodyard, Bunkley, and McGahee have.

Posted by super7 on 2011-11-02 13:35:44

So Tebow had Cam Newton on the championship team? Who cares? Why would they mention that since he was riding the bench?

Anyway, I wanted to see what we have in Tim, and also want him to prove his critics wrong, but I can&#8217t take much more of watching him prove the critics right. Unlike Overgard, I don&#8217t look forward to watching the games again. I did, until I saw Tebow&#8217s first two starts of the year. Now I look forward to seeing anyone else play..including Weber.

Posted by NDbronco on 2011-11-02 13:34:40

I&#8217m Gonna give Tim another week before I can throw him under the bus. Even then I think it&#8217s too early. I hope he steps it up this week, we really need to beat the raiders.

Posted by mjdbronco on 2011-11-02 13:25:22

Bill Barnwell also wrote this in his recap of the action from week 8: &#8220Dareus will never get Rookie of the Year attention with Cam Newton around, but he&#8217s been the best defensive rookie this season by a pretty fair margin.&#8221

&#8220By a pretty fair margin?&#8221 I know Von Miller hasn&#8217t been as spectacular the past two weeks, but Dareus hasn&#8217t jetted ahead of him. Von Miller has looked spectacular at times on a very bad team. Dareus has been good on a good team.

Posted by Justin on 2011-11-02 13:15:50

@ohiobroncs: I agree the weird Tebow zealotry has basically screwed things up. All the same though, I think the guy has earned the opportunity. (I say this as a staunch atheist who doesn&#8217t give a shit about &#8220intangibles&#8221). He was one of the greatest college quarterbacks ever. Yeah I know, &#8220doesn&#8217t always translate to the nfl&#8221. That&#8217s fine. I agree with that. I just think he should be given the same consideration as any other rookie, ie, we know that there&#8217s going to be some ugliness. Frankly his ugliness hasn&#8217t been that bad. He has more touchdowns than interceptions! The last two games were horrific, but those were against some pretty good defenses. (Miami is awful, but their defense is actually alright).

Posted by overgard on 2011-11-02 13:12:21

In the hyper analyzed world of the NFL things change quickly. If this team can hang with OAK who will line up with a QB playing catch-up and maybe without McFadden, perhaps Tebow makes some plays to pull out a W. Then the convo goes back to OMG TIMMY IS THE BEST LEADER EVA, REDPILL1!!1 stuff. And the DP is writing about the Broncs being one or two back in the division with the KC game coming up. People are Tebowing again, etc., etc.

Then again, he could end up running around in the pocket like an idiot and miss wide open guys all over the field and get smoked. One or two more weeks of that BS and he&#8217ll be done in Denver. That would be sad because I, like bfree, don&#8217t think these things are unfixable.

Posted by ButteBronco on 2011-11-02 13:10:27

It&#8217s the Tebow fans that are screwing up his career not Fox and Elway. We haven&#8217t heard a peep about Mallett, Prior, Kapernick (I know he&#8217s injured) or Locker after the season started. It was understood that they weren&#8217t going to play right away and the fans and media accept it. It&#8217s clear after seeing a few games what Fox saw in TC that made him start Orton. If Tebow was a no name 4th round pick he wouldn&#8217t have made the team. He&#8217s getting way more opportunity than another QB with his current skill set would.

Posted by ohiobronco on 2011-11-02 13:01:20

I&#8217m probably going to sound like a drunk person at a party talking about how everyone else is drunk, but I mean, everyone realizes that evaluating Tebow at this point is ridiculous right? I realize the guy is controversial, but he&#8217s started, what, five games? OF COURSE he&#8217s awful, everyone is awful after five games. The notion that he should be playing like a regular starter at this point is retarded.

This is like looking at a baby after 6 months who can&#8217t talk yet and going &#8220well, he might never talk&#8221 Technically true, but you&#8217re getting ahead of yourself a bit, you know? Why not wait a bit? The baby-futures market is remarkably volatile.

Here&#8217s what I know: I look forward to watching games again. I&#8217m actually emotionally invested in them for the first time in a long time. I have no idea if it will turn out well. I&#8217m OK with that. If they move on at the end of the season, hey, that&#8217s fine. But lets give the guy a chance, yeah? And give him some goddamn outlet passes for god&#8217s sake.

Everyone blamed Orton for how awful the offense was, but I think that&#8217s unfair. Orton was neither good nor bad, but I think he proved that our scheme is just shitty. Maybe you don&#8217t win a superbowl with Orton, but he&#8217s proven himself in years past to be at least competent, so if he can&#8217t execute within your scheme and personel, well, maybe there&#8217s a problem there.

You know what I really want to hear about? The defense. Nobody is talking about that, but I think that&#8217s a more interesting subject. (Both good and bad). What happened with the Raheem Moore benching?

Posted by overgard on 2011-11-02 12:59:15

bfree2bronc:

Great points. The answer is that only &#8220Tebow fanatics&#8221 need to lighten up and be level headed but not his critics. They have carte blanche to say &#8220See, I told ya so! LOLOLOLOLOL&#8221

I also agree it&#8217s going to be sad when EFX just lets another young, talented QB go to the wayside rather than bring in proper coaching and are patient with him. Won&#8217t happen, though. Elway&#8217s comments this last Monday were pretty clear.

Posted by Gristle McThornbody on 2011-11-02 12:41:46

Thanks for the Lard, Doug.

I&#8217ll be the one wearing a paper bag over my head at home Sunday.

Here&#8217s the problem with stats. Gabriel can spout about shotgun being used frequently by Tebow; however this does not tell the entire story.

By doing a little research:

1st drive 5/7 plays in shotgun (s/g)

2nd drive 1/3 plays in s/g

3rd drive 2/5 plays in s/g

4th & 5th drives 1/3 plays in s/g

6th drive 3/3 plays in s/g (this one ends with Eddie not getting to the sticks)

7th drive ends the half 3/3 in s/g (desperation)

Halftime score 24-3.

In those 1st 6 drives (throwing out the end of the half drive) on 6 of 9 1st downs, the call was for a run play (3 of those in s/g, but runs nonetheless). Detroit meanwhile ran just 9 of 17 first down plays in the first half.

I don&#8217t know what it all means, but it just doesn&#8217t seem like our offense has been good since we were worried about Y2K.

Posted by Orange and Blue on 2011-11-02 12:02:38

I root for Tebow, if only to prove everyone wrong. I give him credit for continuing to get up after being knocked down constantly. At his age, he&#8217s handled everything with class. If I were him, I would have been found dead in a gutter after a three day McRib bender, with tears still in my eyes and fake rib-sauce dried on my fingers and lips. I got your back Timmy!

Posted by RalphW on 2011-11-02 12:00:38

I ask this question, is there any deficiency Tim Tebow has not fixable? If the answer is no then why don&#8217t the media and analyst at least give him the benefit of the doubt until he shows it csn&#8217t be done? I for one am ready to cash this season in and see once and for all what we really have in Tebow, but I doubt EFX are going to let him develop the way he needs to&#8230